I found the Princelle book

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Having recently acquired my first Zorki 4, I've been getting intrigued (not to say bitten) by the whole FSU RF thing. In these forums, I saw a mention about a famous but hard to find book about all these cameras and their history by Princelle.

So great was my joy when I went to a photographic fair today (Photopuces in Brussels) and saw there, on one of the tables, a small stack of shining new copies of this book. It was the French (original) version, a new edition I think. It was not cheap (55 euro), but still I didn't hesitate and bought it straight away.

So now I can start reading up on all these fascinating FSU cameras, and I'm sure this will eventually lead to some new purchases. I'm not sure if this is a good thing :rolleyes:

BTW, I also bought a Russian universal turret viewfinder at the fair, and a Gossen Sixtino exposure meter. I'm sure to have some fun in the coming days and weeks :)
 
THe Princelle is the best book for the russian rangefinder, I often use it for the description in my website. Before I had the blue book.
 
The blue book? You mean the McKeowns?
I have to buy the Princelle by the way. Pour une fois qu'un auteur français fait quelque chose de potable sur la photographie!! et mondialement connu en plus cocorico
(translate : at once, a French author write an interesting and worldwide known book on photograhy! cockadoodledoo..;)
I found it for 269€ on amazon! it was the first sold out edition
 
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This book changed my life and caused me to spend a lot of money. Essential reading. The second edition is available new for £35.
 
Darn, I'm both happy and unhappy that I didn't make it to Photo Puces. It seems to have saved me €55 + €xxxxx on FSU cameras, but then it would've been a really good read. I'll get myself the McKeowns one day, if at least it's a bit more than a dry list of types and prices.


Peter.
 
lushd said:
This book changed my life and caused me to spend a lot of money. Essential reading. The second edition is available new for £35.
Click to expand...

I heard there are a lot of errors even in the 2nd edition. Why would someone pay so much more for an even less accurate 1st edition?

Is this an indication of a worldwide Russian cameras GAS?:D
 
zhang xk said:
I heard there are a lot of errors even in the 2nd edition. Why would someone pay so much more for an even less accurate 1st edition?

Is this an indication of a worldwide Russian cameras GAS?:D
Click to expand...
Don't know if there are lots of errors but I do know that Jean-Loupe imprived the English translation. Although I still wonder what he meant by calling the Kiev 90 the sea serpent of soviet cameras.

Anyone got any ideas?:confused:
 
lushd said:
Don't know if there are lots of errors but I do know that Jean-Loupe imprived the English translation. Although I still wonder what he meant by calling the Kiev 90 the sea serpent of soviet cameras.

Anyone got any ideas?:confused:
Click to expand...

He might just mean it's very rare - but... "a sea serpent" is an old journalistic phrase meaning an exciting, groundless, self-perpetuating story, something which is "true" because people want it to be so.

If you look at local papers on either side of the channel coast from around 1870 to 1914, you'll see that there are incessant reports of sea serpents during the summer months. Editors had a problem: no news during the "silly season" but loads of tourists who might buy newspapers and wanted escapist fun. So, a paper would report a sea serpent, those in nearby towns would take up the story and soon there would be "genuine" reports...

Something very similar happened in the mid-west United States in the 1890s, where editors reported “mystery airships”. These eventually crossed the atlantic and a famous Punch cartoon of 1912 depicts a dejected sea serpent reading newspaper placards about “scareships”, lamenting that it’s out of a job. That was largely true, although there are some wicked people who believe that the L*ch N*ss M*nster was essentially cooked up by the Inverness Courier when times were bad in the early 1930s. The phrase remained in use - more recent journalistic “sea serpents” include the hidden obscenities of “Captain Pugwash”, Bob Holness’ contribution to Gerry Rafferty’s “Baker Street” and the Mariah Carey “Ethiopians” interview...

So. The Kiev 90 was certainly a sea serpent - it was always about to be mass-produced, or be produced by Minolta, or to be auto-wondrous, or... and there was always someone who knew someone who had met a man at photokina... It was a nice story with little foundation.

Cheers, Ian
 
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